Foundation Stones (Part 3) – Jesus w/the 12 – The Forgotten Foundation of Christian Life

They were being prepared to be workers by simply having lived with Him, listened to Him, and they were processing the experience with Him. I’m going to make one little short note of this. They were not passing out tracts in the street. They were not preaching the gospel. To me, this is the most fascinating thing in the world, and I wish I could tell it to everybody on earth. It consistently holds truth throughout the whole New Testament. Young men didn’t serve the Lord, they grew in the Lord. It was the old men who served the Lord and burned their lives out. That is just wonderful, in your young enthusiasm. Forgive me. Let me start somewhere else. All youth are enthusiastic. You heard the term youthful enthusiasm. Today, youthful enthusiasm is used to preach the gospel and build movements.

My dear brother, I made you use your youthful enthusiasm and getting enthusiastic about knowing Jesus Christ more than nothing else and then knowing Him with a group of other people and sharing Him. Now, Kevin, if you want to be idealistic, if you want to do something that will change the world, don’t go preach in … or out in Africa or don’t go to Russia and pass out, sneak out Bibles to the Russians. Get to know the Lord, get a firm foundation built, and then when you’re 30 and you’re 50, then go work yourself to death for the Lord, and if you see me trying to get you to do all the Christian work, you say to me, don’t do that. You’re big. You’re mean. You’re tough. I’m scared to do things like that. I can’t do them. I don’t have the background for it. You could do that. The only thing I’d say to you is, “Brother, when you get to be 40, I hope to goodness you’ll shake a leg. We’ll go for it then.” And you can, and you should, if you’re built right, if your foundation is strong, I’d like to see you have a very primitive concept of the church. Very primitive and very simple.

I’d like to see you enter into fellowship with Him and with others, and I’d like to see you do that for at least four or five or six years and keep your service down to a minimum, and your experience with Christ, and your experience of sharing Christ up to a maximum. Try to stay out of the limelight, stay out of the light of a lot of friction and problems, fights and feuds, but when they come, try to go to a cross and then remember that the church has got as many downs as it’s got ups. It’s like an elevator. With one down, there’ll be one up. With one up, there’ll be one down.

I hope you are fortunate enough, lucky enough, blessed of God enough that you can have a very simple primitive experience of the church, shared with other brothers and sisters, and that your ambition and enthusiasm in your youth will be in getting to know Him. And I’m going to tell you two things. One of them is, this business of getting to know Jesus Christ and letting your enthusiasm be channeled there doesn’t sell well. I could rally you guys out to the streets to pass out tracks a lot easier than I can get you up at 6:00 in the morning to spend your time with the Lord. Say amen. Is it not true? It sells better. It’s easier to work till you sweat than it is to put your spirit in operation.

Anybody can go out and work. Build a pyramid. The other takes a little enlightenment and vision, a sight of Christ. And the other one I’m going to say to you, and I wish I had the nerve to say this to everybody who comes to visit here. Everybody wants Jesus. Everybody wants the deeper Christian life. Everybody wants the know the Lord well and get blessed. There are very few people who want the church, and you can’t separate them. If you were to follow the Lord Jesus Christ, that has got to come out of the church. Someone said to me yesterday, “Oh, but I’m just so happy being a Christian alone.” That’s just like saying, “I’m just so happy to be a fish without water. I’m so happy to be a human being without air. I’m so happy to be an airplane without wings. I’m so happy to selfishly take all the blessings of God without the problems that come in interaction.

You cannot separate the Christian life from the corporate Christian life. You cannot separate being a real, genuine, true Christian from being a Christian with other people. That is part of the very organic expression of the life of God. The life of God has never been shared alone. Even in the beginning there was the fellowship of the Trinity, and in Galilee there was the fellowship of Christ with 20, and those 20 who knew Him best did not go out and take their little gold and jewels and put them together and say, “Wow, look what I got from Christ.” And miserly keep it the rest of their lives. Their instincts fifty days later got them together in an upper room. And when the Lord’s glory fell upon them and a lot of people got saved, church was the instinct of their nature. Just like a nail on the end of my fingers, the instinct of my body and barking is the instinct of a dog and flying is the instinct of a duck, that the instinct of the Christian is toward the corporate.